Thursday, May 18, 2017

Was the wrong person on trial?

(First published in the Manawatu Standard and Nelson Mail, May 17.)

I can’t help wondering
whether the wrong person was on trial in the Whanganui District Court last
week.

The name on the charge sheet
was that of Kerry James “Chester” Borrows, who was tried on a charge of
careless driving causing injury. But it seems to me there were other charges
that could equally have been brought as a result of an incident that occurred
during an anti-TPP protest in March last year – only not against Borrows.

For example, there’s a charge
of disorderly behaviour and another of obstructing a public way.

I’m not a lawyer, but it’s
surely not too much of a stretch to argue that a person deliberately stopping
someone else going about their lawful business is acting contrary to public
order, which is how my dictionary defines disorderly behaviour.

As for an alternative charge
of obstructing a public way, anyone watching the TV news last week, and seeing
exactly what happened in Whanganui on March 22 2016, could form their own
conclusions.

Borrows, the National MP for
Whanganui, was driving out the entrance of a motor inn with cabinet minister
Paula Bennett in the front passenger seat. Several protesters were standing by
the gate holding placards.

The TV camera showed two
women stepping out into the path of the approaching car with the apparent
intention of forcing it to stop. At least two police officers were standing by,
but did nothing to intervene.

The car was moving very
slowly. There was some dispute in court as to whether it actually stopped at
one point, but it was certainly moving when it came into contact with the two
women.

A police witness estimated
the car’s speed as 1kmh – far slower than walking speed. Borrows testified that
he feathered his brakes, as he was trained to do in similar situations during
his 24 years as a police officer.

In any event, the protesters
had ample time to get out of the way. They chose not to.

Let me repeat: they chose not
to. They seemed to think their opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership gave
them the moral right to prevent two elected public officials going about their lawful
business.

Predictably enough, the
vehicle nosed into them. One of the women rather theatrically testified that
she thought: “Oh my god, you’re going under, girl.” At this point the police on
the scene were roused from their torpor and belatedly moved the women out of
the way

It looked to me as if the
protesters were playing a game of chicken. Even if they weren’t exactly willing
the car to hit them, they seemed to be at least daring it to happen.

That impression was
reinforced when one of them, having been pulled clear, shrieked in the
direction of the TV crew: “Did anyone get that on camera?”

You could be excused for wondering
whether she had set the situation up for exactly that purpose. The idea of
public protests, after all, is to get noticed – and what better way to attract
public attention than by being hit by a car driven by a government MP and
carrying a high-profile minister?

You can imagine the posts on
social media that would have followed: “Frail elderly woman mowed down in
callous act of Tory brutality.”

Borrows testified that the
reason he didn’t come to a complete halt was that a male protester at the scene
had earlier made threats against Bennett on Facebook. To be precise, the protester
had written: “See you shortly, bitch”, which surely tells you something about
the calibre of some anti-TPP protesters.

He had also a posted a
picture of a dildo with Bennett’s name on it. Borrows testified that he thought
it was a wooden dildo which, if thrown at Bennett – as had happened to her
fellow minister Steven Joyce at Waitangi only weeks before – could have done damage.

In acquitting Borrows, the
judge cited the dildo threat as an extenuating factor. She accepted that he had
valid reason to be concerned about Bennett’s comfort, if not safety.

So Borrows got off. But why was he prosecuted in the first place?
I’ve seen it suggested that the police proceeded with the charge against him
for fear that they might otherwise be seen as going soft on a former cop –
hardly a compelling reason.

And why did the police take
no action against the protesters, whose injuries (they were both treated for
soft tissue damage) were the direct result of their own provocative and
arguably unlawful behaviour? If a case could be made against Borrows for
careless driving, they should surely have also been charged for their own
contributory role.

Come to that, why did the
officers on the scene not step in earlier to prevent the pantomime? Have they
been disciplined or reprimanded?

In the end, the outcome was
the right one. But it should never have come to that point, and Borrows can
hardly be blamed for sounding bitter about his former colleagues in uniform.

About Me

I am a freelance journalist and columnist living in the Wairarapa region of New Zealand. In the presence of Greenies I like to boast that I walk to work each day - I've paced it out and it's about 15 metres. I write about all sorts of stuff: politics, the media, music, wine, films, cycling and anything else that piques my interest - even sport, though I admit I don't have the intuitive understanding of sport that most New Zealand males absorb as if by osmosis. I'm a former musician (bass and guitar) with a lifelong love of music that led me to write my book 'A Road Tour of American Song Titles: From Mendocino to Memphis', published by Bateman NZ in July 2016. I've been in journalism for more than 40 years and like many journalists I know a little bit about a lot of things and probably not enough about anything. I have never won any journalism awards.